Theology
Volume Five, Issue 4 Autumn 2025
CONTENTS
EDITORIAL
Lucinda M. Vardey
THEOLOGY AND SPIRITUALITY
Sandra M. Schneiders I.H.M.
LIVING THEOLOGY: WOMEN’S INFLUENCE ON CHURCH HISTORY
John Dalla Costa
IN SEARCH OF A FEMININE THEOLOGY: A STORY UNFOLDING
Lucinda M. Vardey
THE MAGDALA INTERVIEW: ROOTED IN REALITY
Greg Rupik with Maria Clara Bingemer
THE FUTURE OF THEOLOGY
Gordon Rixon S.J.
BOOKS OF INTEREST
Alexander Ezechukwu O.C.D.
Editorial
What is theology? Traditionally theology is recognized as a study of God and the foundations of faith, mostly undertaken by those intending to enter religious life and/or teach. Nowadays — particularly since Vatican II — theology has, by its many movements, broadened its scope to include not only the academy, but lived experience and sectors of culture.
Women scholars have provided a fresh view to the study of scripture, dogma and spirituality contributing to what is now termed ‘feminist theology.’ One of the foremost influential texts in this area was penned by Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins coming out of the second wave of cultural feminism in the 1970s. Fiorenza applied importance to historical memory “and the study and writing of history” that shaped cultural and religious identity, claiming that “the memories that we keep reveal who we are.”
Because past academic, historical and theological scholarship had served the dominant classes in society and the Church, Fiorenza exposed that God’s people “especially the poor and exploited women and men of all nations and races” were not only marginalized within their countries but also within the theological memory of the Church. Her work challenges theological scholarship “to develop a paradigm for biblical revelation that does not understand the New Testament as an archetype, but as a prototype.” Interpretation of scripture written by male scholars in mostly a patriarchal culture brings to a head the
need for a theology of liberation towards a “discipleship of equals.”
Feminist theology is recognized as developing alongside other liberation theologies in challenging “the socalled objectivity and value-neutrality of academic theology.” By citing that all theology “willingly or not, is by definition always engaged for or against the oppressed,” Fiorenza defines feminist theology as being occupied with women’s oppression as well as their struggle for liberation and transcendence. The grassroots movements of liberation theology, that emerged during the 1960s and 70s in Latin America, focusses on liberation for the poor. Both theologies, however, share similar ideals, particularly for creating communities of equality.
There has been some progress towards women’s equality in society albeit with resistance and opposition. We still have far to go, especially in taking seriously women’s gifts and charisms and incorporating them more fully in the Church and the Church’s teachings.
It is impossible to cover every movement of present-day theologies in this issue, but what we share here we consider significant insights on the matters concerning our changing Church culture and how they contribute to theological renewal.
Sandra M. Schneiders I.H.M., one of the earliest women in North America to receive a doctorate in theology and tenure in the academy, leads off with a brief overview of the subjects covered in historic academic study and introduces the emergence of spirituality as a vital part of the theological equation.
John Dalla Costa reviews the lived theologies of the four female Doctors of the Church, who Elizabeth A. Dreyer calls “Accidental theologians” the title of her book.
The events in the story of seeking a theology not so much perceived as feminist but feminine (based on the wisdom of the saints and present-day women theologians) are shared as promptings of the Holy Spirit in response to Pope Francis’ invitation in 2013.
Maria Clara Bingemer’s long association with Latin American liberation theology provides us with its historic particulars, as well as its many evolutions towards a present-day theology, in the Magdala interview conversation with Greg Rupik. And the president of the Jesuit Regis College in Toronto, Gordon Rixon S.J., reports on a recent congress at the Vatican on the future of theology.
The way forward in theology studies is clearly opening up with the challenges from artificial intelligence and climate change, to mention only a few of them, but the thrust towards “a deeper ecclesiological vision that sees faith, reason, and culture not as separate areas but as interconnected and serving the mission of evangelization”(Rixon) is key. Both Maria Clara Bingemer and Gordon Rixon have shown that the creative arts, poetry, literature, performance etc. can all contribute to the theological tapestry. As John Dalla Costa had concluded, we already have this experiential wisdom within the Church. It is just that we need to notice and take the initiative to study it more fully.
For a more personal view, Alexander Ezechukwu O.C.D.’s review of Susan Muto’s book The Triple Way to Transformation provides direction on the centrality of the way to individual formation and transformation through lived experience. At a time when western Christianity is “rapidly in decline despite the many centuries of building up a fortress of intellectual theology, the need for a complementary theology/spirituality of formation as advocated by Muto, takes the truths of faith and embodies them in everyday life.” ■
Lucinda
M. Vardey Editor
“Women are active producers of theology, just as they are an object of theological reflection. They bring their own method and a particular perspective with which to conceive and express the traditional topics of the faith.”
Maria Clara Bingemer (Women in the Future of the Theology of Liberation).
Sandra M. Schneiders I.H.M. studied philosophy at the University of Detroit and theology at the Institut Catholique, Paris and the Gregorian University in Rome. She is Professor Emerita of New Testament and Spirituality at the Jesuit School of Theology and the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California. A recipient of six honorary degrees and multiple awards for theology, her area of expertise is in Scripture (New Testament), Christian Spirituality, feminism and the prophetic in religious life. She has published 15 books including “With Oil in Their Lamps: Faith, Feminism and the Future” (2000, Paulist Press) and “Beyond Patching: Faith and Feminism in the Catholic Church” (2004, Paulist Press). Her most recent book is “Jesus Risen in Our Midst: Essays on the Resurrection of Jesus in the Fourth Gospel” (2013, LIturgical Press). She has also contributed chapters to 79 books and written over 100 articles. Past president of the Society for the Study of Christian Spirituality, she has given lectures throughout the USA, Canada, Taiwan, Australia and New Zealand.
Theology and Spirituality
Sandra M. Schneiders I.H.M.
Until the high Middle Ages the study of theology was a unitary endeavor to which the modern divisions into dogmatics (with its subdivisions of theology, christology, and ecclesiology), moral theology (with its specializations into general and special, personal and social) church history, and biblical studies was entirely foreign. Much of what was called theology at that time would today be called biblical theology and/or biblical spirituality, that is, it was exegetically based interpretation of scripture for the purpose of understanding the faith and living the Christian life.
In the thirteenth century Thomas Aquinas divided his great theological synthesis, the Summa Theologiae , into three parts: Part 1 dealing with God as first principle; Part II dealing with God as last end of creation including humans; and Part III on the Incarnate Word as the way to the end. In effect, he established the divisions of theology as they would be understood until Vatican II: dogma, moral, and christology. Thomas put most of what he had to say about the Christian life in Part II of the Summa, thus effectively establishing what would later be called spiritual theology or spirituality as a subdivision of moral theology. And thus the situation has remained until very recent times.
It must be remembered that throughout this long period, and after it until the early twentieth century, a great deal of highly valuable writing on the spiritual life was produced. Sometimes these were works of formal theology, but more often they were not. The literature of spirituality was written in extremely diverse genres. There were monastic and religious rules, commentaries on scripture, sermons and conferences, poems and hymns, spiritual treatises, biography and autobiography.
Some of this writing was done by professional theologians such as Augustine, Bernard, and John of the Cross. But much of it was also done by people who were not, or could not be, theologians in the professional sense of the word, people like the desert fathers and mothers, Benedict, Francis of Assisi, the author of The Cloud of Unknowing, Catherine of Siena, Julian of Norwich, Teresa of Avila, Thérèse of Lisieux, Thomas Merton, and Dorothy Day. And, of course many of the great classics were written by Orthodox theologians and non-theologians such as Gregory Palamas and Symeon the New Theologian as well as by Protestants such as Jacob Boehme, William Law, John Wesley, and Jonathan Edwards. Some of these writers, at least among the Catholics, referred to their works as “spiritual theology” or “mystical theology” but often enough they gave no such designations. In any case, what these great masters and mistresses of the spiritual life wrote was not part of what was taught in the schools under the heading of “theology.” And when spiritual writers did make explicit their theological presuppositions they invariably did so in Scholastic terms even though they sometimes proceeded to write in quite other terms, usually derived from their own mystical experience.
In summary, then, the real history of spirituality as the subject of disciplined reflection and exposition has yet to be written because the classics of this tradition developed largely outside the schools while what was taught in the schools concerning the spiritual life was meager and highly formalized. In fact, the discipline whose subject matter was the spiritual life was first named in 1655 by a Polish Franciscan named Dobrosielski who called the branch of dogma dealing with the spiritual life “ascetical theology.”
In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, because of the intense interest in the life of perfection that had developed in the preceding century and the debate that it had generated, the spiritual life became an object of study and teaching. By this time the vocabulary of this science, described as the “science of the life of perfection,” became stabilized. The field was called “spiritual theology,” the science which studied the spiritual life as it was lived by those who had progressed beyond the mere keeping of the commandments. This science has two subdivisions: “ascetical theology” which studied the life of perfection up to the beginning of passive mystical experience; and “mystical theology” which studied that life from the beginning of passive mystical experience to its culmination in the most perfect union possible this side of the Beatific Vision.
LIVED SPIRITUALITY AND THEOLOGY
As the history of the Church makes abundantly clear, spirituality as lived religious experience is prior to theology, both ontologically and psychologically. The New Testament itself bears witness to this fact. Christians, because of the experience they had with the historical Jesus and especially because of the resurrection experience, began to reflect theologically, in light of both Old Testament revelation and available philosophical frameworks, on his identity and mission. Later experience of conflicting
interpretations of the Christ-event led to theological refinements, while subsequent experience of Christians interacting with diverse historical-cultural circumstances raised new problems and suggested new answers which required to be integrated into the already elaborated synthesis. Over the span of centuries the intellectual edifice of Christian theology came into being and reached a peak of integration and clarity in the thirteenth century.
Often “theology” is used as an umbrella term for all the sacred sciences, that is, for all religious studies carried out in the context of explicit reference to revelation and explicitly affirmed confessional commitment. Thus, under the heading of theology one finds systematic theology including foundational theology, theology of God, ecclesiology, christology, and eschatology; moral theology including both general and special, personal and social ethics; and, finally, church history and biblical studies. A theology department or school might also include practical and/or mixed disciplines such as religious education, pastoral counselling, liturgy, homiletics, and ministry.
While theology is understood in this manner the discipline of Christian spirituality belongs under the heading of theology as one field of revelation-related, confessionally committed scholarly endeavor, namely, the field that studies Christian religious experience as such in an interdisciplinary way. As in other theological disciplines today the edges of the field are often “soft.” Several of the once-designated “secular” disciplines are an integral part of the studies carried out in the field of spirituality. But this does not cancel the central fact that the essential work of spirituality as a field of study is theological in this broad sense of the term.
However, there is a second and narrower understanding of theology. In this second sense theology denotes systematic theology and moral theology, the two major fields which have, since the Middle Ages, organized the scientific study of the faith. Taken in this restricted sense, theology does not include biblical studies, church history or the practical and mixed disciplines. And by the same token it also does not include spirituality. This amounts to a denial of the classical position that spirituality is a dependent of dogmatic theology and/or a subdivision of moral theology. Although spirituality as the lived experience of the faith is indeed the horizon within which all theological work must be done since theology arises from and is oriented toward that lived experience of the Christian community, spirituality as an academic discipline has its own subjects of study, its own methods and approaches, and its own objectives, just as do biblical studies, church history, and the practical theological disciplines. ■
Selected from Sandra M. Schneiders
“Theology and Spirituality: Strangers, Rivals, or Partners?” published in
Horizons, Volume 13, Issue 2, September 9, 2014, pages 253-274. Reproduced with permission from Cambridge University Press.
“Dogmatic and mystical theology, or theology and “spirituality” are not to be set apart in mutually exclusive categories, as if mysticism were for saintly women and theological study were for practical, but, alas, unsaintly men. This fallacious division perhaps explains much that is actually lacking both in theology and in spirituality. But the two belong together just as body and soul belong together. Unless they are united, there is no fervour, no life and no spiritual value in theology, no substance, no meaning…”
Thomas
Merton (New Seeds of Contemplation).
John Dalla Costa is an ethicist, theologian and author of five books. He also publishes on sapielbooks.com. For more on his background please visit our website
Living Theology: Women’s Influence on Church History
John Dalla Costa
I became an accidental feminist in the early 1970s thanks to Sister Albertus Magnus McGrath O.P. An intimidating yet amazing teacher at the college where I was studying, Sr. Albertus Magnus (who we called SAM) forced all in her orbit to challenge our deepest assumptions about male privilege in society and the Church. She taught history not as knowledge about the past, but as a thicket of questions that exposed ideas still prevailing, including present-day prejudices that objectify women. As a religious, SAM’s study of history as forming—as well as deforming—the present, was refined through spiritual disciplines of contemplative prayer. Her reading the “signs of the past” so illuminated the signs of the times that she anticipated a cohort of feminist theologians, including Rosemary Radford Ruether and Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza.
SAM came to mind frequently as I read Elizabeth A. Dreyer’s Accidental Theologians: Four women Who Shaped Christianity. Dreyer undertook a project similar to SAM’s, studying the women Doctors of the Church in their specific historical context, and highlighting their theological contributions to the universal Church. Hildegard of Bingen, Catherine of Siena, Teresa of Avila, and Thérèse of Lisieux have each profoundly marked the consciousness, as well as conscience, of our faith. Because they were women, and because they were excluded from the academy, each forged their theology in a personal encounter with Jesus Christ. This encounter enflamed their hearts with such heat as to expand intellectual understanding. While tradition has long recognized the theology from above— brilliantly forged by the Church Fathers— we have often resisted, or ignored, the theological genius from below of our Church Mothers.
These four women Doctors of the Church each incubated their theologies in times of great social turbulence. Resistance towards women’s spiritual wisdom only grew more acute and perilous in periods of turmoil, especially as the authority and structures of the Church were being called into question. Each woman stood their ground. Each took the prophetic risk of claiming the truth of their experience of God’s Word, and of God’s intimate, healing and transforming presence in their lives. By their prophetic agitation, by their prophetic insistence, these women taught us as Church to pray differently, to see God’s revelation in the beauty of nature, to oppose dictatorships of power, and to recognize that every baptized Christian has a vocation to service and holiness.
Theology may seem esoteric as the realm of study and discourse that frames and explores aspects of Church doctrine. In fact, theology is what we would today call living faith integrally with heart, mind and body. Domenican theologian, MarieDomenique Chenu reminded us that “the Incarnation is not finished,” that we, through Baptism and the gifts of the Holy Spirit, are to embody Christ in our current world with insight as well as charity, with creative interpretation as well as liturgical communion.
Hildegard, Catherine, Teresa and Thérèse were exactly such agents of integral witness to the Gospel. They developed theologies from life, not books; from Christ as their Master and not only from scholarly mentors. By definition, integral means a harmony or synergy of parts. Each woman generated an integral theology that was, at once, unique and all encompassing. While distinct—what Dreyer defined as Hildegard’s theology of the Holy Spirit, Catherine’s of the Incarnation, Teresa’s of the Human Person, and Thérèse’s of the Cross—each are systematically whole and holy.
These extraordinary women had their own stories, each of which help us understand the journey of the soul, and the journey of the Church. Dreyer calls them “accidental theologians” because they did not subscribe to a formal school or tradition, but rather improvised an original corpus that contributes to the Church’s understanding of faith. Without preconceived structures, these women used the
scriptures, the liturgies, and their experience of prayer to construct a coherent theology. Creation, Trinity, Incarnation, grace, sacraments, and ecclesial order all emerge from their personal experiences of God’s superabundant love. Rather than the academic rigor of peer review, these theologies were honed and refined in each woman soul’s struggles with temptation, illness, abandonment, ridicule and even persecution. Following Christ, bearing with him the cross of love, allowed them to grow hope in moments of great personal desolation.
ENLIVENING DOCTRINE
Feminine theology was revealed as a process rather than outcome. These women shaped their knowledge of God from what is deeply embedded in the Gospels and Letters of the New Testament. By praying with these texts they allowed grace to inspire and affirm new horizons of understanding that the institutional Church would later recognize as indispensable to living our faith. Each woman derived their theology in contemplation and solitude; however, for being in such close relationship to Christ, they felt an overflowing obligation to share the deep mysteries of faith with others. Because it was something they experienced, doctrine became threedimensional—living, loving, and life-giving.
The four women were recognized as Doctors of the Church precisely because their contributions have been momentous and enduring. That said, we should not relegate their theological innovations to history. Instead of an artifact to admire, the women Doctors have potent spiritual medicine for our time.
Two applications are particularly worth noting.
First, that their integral theologies grew out of prayer and personal experience serves as a model for implementing the synodal reform presently underway in the Church. The lessons of synod, now encoded in various documents, were modelled by these women, particularly in their capacity to listen to the Spirit, and listen to others. Held in the suspicion and dismissal that SAM had exposed was part of history’s treatment of women, the four Doctors pioneered the innovations which validate Pope Francis’ teaching that the Church must learn its theologies from the margins. As Dreyer notes, the women’s theology anticipated the principles of synodal reform through a method that fused prayer with reflection; contemplation with action.
Second, the women Doctors of the Church practiced forms of communitymaking which, in my view, provide a most-needed theological revitalization for Catholic Social Teaching. Pope Leo XIV has already invited for the social teaching of the Church to shift “from doctrine to dialogue.” With their theologies purified in the furnace of exclusion, these holy women turned the fruits of their ordeals into wisdom for the community, mirroring the Trinitarian embrace that is intrinsically relational, intuitive, symbolic, self-offering, and inclusive. For our time of division and polarization we have much to learn from these Doctors whose theologies bridged even chasms of others’ prejudice towards them.
Our current need for a true integral development is imminently well served by these four integral theologians. ■
Lucinda M. Vardey is the editor of With One Accord and the author of ten books. She also publishes on sapielbooks.com. For more on her background please visit our website.
In Search of a Feminine Theology: A Story Unfolding
Lucinda M. Vardey
In September 2013, early in his pontificate, Pope Francis invited the Church to develop a profound theology of women. I was called to respond. Having worked in the area of feminine spirituality for over thirty years, and organized several conferences, I felt able to assume the work and was ready to begin. However, due to a number of incidents and insights, I was stalled in acting immediately. While waiting I was shown that I had to respond to spiritual guidance, and that came through art. I had once read a book by a neurosurgeon, Leonard Shlain whose premise was that there were feminine and masculine aspects to the brain in both men and women. He identified alphabetic logic and words, reason and action to the left brain (masculine) and nonverbal communication by images and feeling states, such as love, humour and aesthetic appreciation, to the right brain (feminine). So it was perhaps no surprise that I was being given images to steer me towards a new and different way of organizing.
The first piece of art inspiration came in a postcard of an 18th-century sculpture by Giovanni Battista Maini my husband discovered while visiting the Basilica of Sant’Andrea delle Fratte in Rome. It depicted St. Anne alone on her bed, in the throes of a painful death. She clasps her right breast, exposed through her robe, her face distorted, her body seized by suffering. Its power carried a message, but it wasn’t clear at first. A few weeks later the image moved me one morning in prayer to “Enter into the suffering that women have undergone, act from that, and go to Rome.”
In Rome doors flew open.The editors of the women’s page of the Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, Lucetta Scaraffia and Giulia Galeotti, offered me lunch on St. Mary Magdalene’s feast day (26 July 2014) where we agreed to collaborate on a seminar entitled Towards an Intrinsic Feminine Theology. We decided that research needed to be garnered from the writings and lives of the women saints of the Church, and that we would have representatives come together from all parts of the world the following year to plan the agenda. We chose this planning session to convene on St. Catherine
of Siena’s feast day (April 29, 2015). We subsequently invited two award-winning theologians, Anne-Marie Pelletier from France and Hanna-Barbara Gerl-Falkovitz from Germany. We were joined later by Sr. Judette Gallares R.C. from the Philippines (Head of Ecclesia of Women, a forum for Asian Catholic Women Theologians), Philomena Njeri Mwaura (Associate Professor of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Kenyatta University in Nairobi) and Dominican sisters, teachers and writers, Mary Madeline Todd from the U.S., and Catherine Aubin from France.
Another artwork, a 16th-century Dutch painting of Mary Magdalene evoked an interesting turn in direction. The image depicts her alone in a room, seated at a desk with inkwell, writing in a book, with the ever-present jar of ointment. Her brown hair is placed neatly under a headpiece. She wears velvet and silk yet is not overly adorned. She could be in a cloister, or a space off the living quarters of a house, or maybe a vestibule of a church. Over time the image teaches me “to create a place for the feminine in the Church.”
I shared the image of Mary Magdalene with my pastor in Toronto, a Basilian priest, and explained its message. He responded without hesitation. A few days later he connected me to a group of young theology students (men and women) and we founded what we called the Magdala Conciliary for dialogue on feminine theology.
We struggled at first learning to distinguish the academic from the mystical, the rational from the experiential, the mind from the senses and the body, the doctrinal from the spiritual, and the patriarchal structure of thought and imagination from the intuitive reality of the workings of the Holy Spirit. But a new vocabulary eventually emerged, breaking the dichotomy often associated with a feminist position. Accompanied by more images, artwork and symbols, we began to give expression to feminine wisdom long hidden, and to feminine treasure long buried.
SIGNIFICANT MOVEMENTS
Confident in the scope of our discoveries, our pastor sought to provide new opportunities for women to more fully participate by creating a feminine presence in the local liturgies and church ministries. He even took the unprecedented step of delivering his Easter homily as a dialogue with a female member of the parish staff. The packed church was hushed by this unique experience of inclusion. In that silence, I realized that that was not only an historic moment in our Church, but a tangible grace in harmony with the gospel, a man and woman recounting Jesus and Mary’s exchange in the garden.
Beyond supporting the monthly Conciliary gathering in the parish, our pastor recognized the implications of this feminine study for the universal Church and secured funds to sponsor the Rome seminar as the Conciliary’s contribution to the wider Church.
The third artistic revelation came in Rome prior to our planning session the following year. Lucetta brought along Sister Catherine Aubin, a French Dominican theologian, writer and Vatican broadcaster. We three met in the Church of Santa Maria Sopra Minerva where Sr. Aubin guided us to a side altar where St. Catherine of Siena’s body had originally lain (prior to being under the main altar where it lies today). The huge wall fresco was hard to see in detail in the dimly lit chapel, but Sr. Aubin explained that it illustrated what St. Catherine in her Dialogue describes as a bridge. Depicted climbing up the body of the crucified Jesus, St. Catherine embraces him fully in his love and his peace through her soul’s perfection, purified of vice and developed in virtue, with a kiss upon his lips.
“This is it!” Lucetta emphatically exclaimed. From the embodied implications of St. Catherine climbing up the Incarnation, Lucetta discerned the methodology for the seminar: “We begin with the Heart in feminine relationship with Jesus.” The intimacy involves and comes from suffering together, suggesting “Tears” as the second theme. In its union, love inspires service and yields precious fruits.
AN ALTERNATIVE THEOLOGY
Given the scope of what was to be covered, we decided that we would, in fact, host three seminars over separate years to engage each of the themes of “Heart, Tears and Fruits.” Only after we confirmed this program did I find heart, tears and fruits mentioned sequentially in St. Catherine’s Dialogue. She was told by God that “all tears come from the heart” and that God has reasons “for tears and their fruits.”
We defined our aim as not to necessarily attach a woman’s interpretation to an already existing theology, nor to critique the theology inherited by the Church. Rather we discerned to dignify what could be an alternative theology, wholly authentic to women’s culture, experience and mystical revelation.
Where traditional theology already has its established rubrics and systematics, this experiential theology of women seems to have evolved, through the many centuries, in a more relational and organic way. The challenge we embraced was to identify and bring to the surface the patterns embedded in the lives, writings, prayers and teachings of the women saints and Doctors of the Church. We asked whether there are theological consistencies common to the mystical experience of women? What exists in a woman’s natural manner of relating and communicating that can help identify the basic rudiments that go beyond verbal language? Are there specific metaphors and symbols used by some in their experience of God that provide clues to the hidden
language of emotions, silence and interiority? Does the unique relationship women have with the incarnated Jesus generate a distinctly feminine christology? How do we recover the faces, stories and gifts of the women left nameless and speechless in scripture and history? What are the theological threads from women in the developing world that can be woven into this tapestry? And what particular theology can be recognized rooted in the sufferings of women?
Over the course of the three years, we began to identify what could be considered intrinsic to a feminine theology, by not only the experience of the saints but also women in culture and society. “Heart, Tears and Fruits” gradually revealed a discernible method, a three-fold process of love, suffering and service.
At the end of the three years, our group of presenters and participants from around the world felt, as a community, that we had uncovered something valuable for the universal Church and planned a follow-up Colloquy to include men and women, clergy and lay, to take place in Assisi. With the Covid pandemic, this plan was curtailed. Instead, the idea of an online journal called “With One Accord: Learning and Living the Feminine Dimension as Church” was, in a sense, summoned by the Holy Spirit, and became reality soon thereafter. In 2024 Paulist Press published the findings of the Rome seminars in the book Heart, Tears, Fruits: The Search for a Feminine Theology.
After informing Pope Francis of our research, the founding of the Magdala Conciliary, and the journal With One Accord and sending him a copy of the book from our seminars, he responded three times expressing much appreciation. In his last message he invoked the protection of the Holy Mother upon our work and imparted his Apostolic Blessing with a wholehearted pledge of peace and abundant heavenly gifts. ■
“An authentic theology however simple or learned it professes to be, can only be developed in the Holy Spirit.”
Hans Urs von Balthasar (quoted in The Incomprehensible Someone by Joseph K. Gordon).
Maria Clara Bingemer has, for almost forty years, served as professor of Fundamental Theology and the Theology of God at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. She also served as Dean of the Faculty of Theology and Human Sciences. After participating in the construction of the Jesuit Centro Loyola de Fé e Cultura (The Loyola Center for Faith and Culture) at PUC Rio, she became its Chair. Co- editor of the Revista Eclesiástica Brasileira (REB), the most important theological magazine in Brazil, she also serves on the editorial board of the international journal of theology, Concilium. From 2004 to 2008 she was co-editor of the Journal of the American Academy of Religion (JAAR). One of the founders of feminist liberation theology in Latin America, she was awarded the Brazilian Fulbright Distinguished Chair in Democracy and Human Development at the Kellogg Institute for International Studies at the University of Notre Dame, U.S.A. She is presently President of ALALITE (Latin American Association of Literature and Theology) and Vice President of SOTER (The Theology Society of Brazil). Her books on Trinitarian and Latin American Theologies have been published in many languages, among them are “A Face for God“ (2014), “The Mystery and the World: Passion for God in Times of Unbelief”(2016), “Love of God, Love of Justice “(2019) and “Simone Weil: Mystic of Passion and Compassion “(2015).
Greg Rupik is a contributing editor of With One Accord. For more information on his background please visit our website.
The Magdala Interview
Rooted in Reality
Gordon Rixon S.J. is a Jesuit priest and theologian who serves as the President of Regis College at the University of Toronto and a professor at the Regis St. Michael’s Faculty of Theology specializing in Roman Catholic systematic theology. A noted scholar of Bernard Lonergan, he brings a rigorous, reflective approach to questions of faith, culture, and human understanding. With an academic foundation that includes an undergraduate degree in statistical theory, Rixon combines analytical clarity with spiritual depth. He has lived, studied, and travelled extensively across Asia, Europe, Africa, Canada, and the United States, shaping a global and engaged perspective. He has a special interest in the social and spiritual dimensions of reconciliation with Indigenous peoples in Canada.
The Future of Theology
Gordon Rixon S.J.
In December 2024, the Vatican Dicastery for Culture and Education hosted 500 theologians, church leaders, and interdisciplinary voices from around the world to discuss “The Future of Theology: Legacy and Envisioning” during an international congress held at Lateran University in Rome. The two-day event began with a private audience with Pope Francis and focused on the where, how, and why of theology’s changing mission.
After highlighting the essential and often overlooked contributions of women theologians, Pope Francis shared an encouraging message and a challenging invitation. He urged theology to assist the Church in thinking at the level of complexity needed to engage diverse and rapidly changing societies and cultures worldwide. He pointed out that achieving this requires theology to help us “to think about how to think.”
Today, moving beyond simple repetitions of tradition calls for a methodological shift. While theology always requires a friendship with Christ, it now also demands cultural and intercultural engagement, active listening, creative imagination, resilient courage, and the energetic exchange of ideas across disciplines. Pope Francis concluded by noting the growing interest in theological education, and invited the gathering to make studies more accessible to laypeople who want to reflect on faith and its role in society.
WHERE, HOW AND WHY
Centered around three questions—Where, How and Why—the congress was conducted through plenaries, interdisciplinary panels, and group discernment using the “Conversation in the Spirit” method. The first session “Where” focused on theology’s geographic, cultural, and liturgical roots. Distinguished scholars from each world continent offered nuanced insights into local theological expressions.
The second session shifted the focus to “How.” In a creative move, the congress invited artists, scientists, and thinkers from outside theological circles—such as Australian musician Maeve Heney, Italian physicist Carlo Rovelli, Italian filmmaker Alice Rohrwacher, and Belgian playwright Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt—to challenge theology from the outside. Their provocations received thoughtful responses from theologians like Mary Jerome Obiorah (Nigeria) and James Keenan S.J. (United States).
The final session “Why” explored theology’s role in the Church and society. Drawing again from diverse global contexts, speakers such as Sr. Caroline Mbonu (Africa) and Stephanie Ann Puen (Asia) called for theology that is socially embedded, pastorally responsive, and ecclesially accountable.
THEOLOGICAL EDUCATION AND CULTURE
The congress marks a significant step in implementing the Vatican’s updated pastoral and theological priorities, based on a deeper ecclesiological vision that sees faith, reason, and culture not as separate areas but as interconnected and serving the mission of evangelization.
While the plenary presentations were consistently excellent, many participants considered the small-group spiritual conversations the highlight of the congress. Approximately thirty groups, each comprising around fifteen participants and organized by language, met twice to share theological insights derived from their local contexts. The outcomes of these conversations were marked by thoughtful articulation and deep listening, and they were reported in extended, unhurried plenary sessions.
The contrast between the group discussions and the plenary sessions highlighted the organizer’s challenge and achievement, and the Holy Spirit’s collaborative activity. Due in part to the large number of attendees and location, the plenaries were held in a traditional magisterial style at Lateran University’s aula magna. However, turning from the stage to the body of the aula revealed men and women from every inhabited continent, representing diverse cultures, languages, and social backgrounds, whose meaningful contributions already demonstrate that contextual theology is deeply rooted in the Church’s life and mission. As the congress concluded with reflections by Monseigneur Giovanni Cesare Pagazzi, secretary of the dicastery, affirming theology’s ongoing role as both a grounded and prophetic voice in a changing world, those present could hear Pope Francis’s call for a Church that listens, learns, and walks with humanity. The boundaries between theological education and culture have become porous and interconnected.
For those who have followed the journey of theological formation since the Second Vatican Council, the implications of the congress experience become clear and straightforward. The earlier efforts to clarify the confusion between unity and uniformity, to place theology within its historical contexts, and to view cultural pluralism as a sign of divine generosity, have led to a strong affirmation: respectful recognition of diversity is itself a fruit of the Spirit that encourages encounter and dialogue needed to evangelize a fragmented world, foster more profound unity, and act for a more just world.
Reflecting the state of theological education at Regis College at the University of Toronto and its recent reorganized collaboration with the University of St. Michael’s College, the congress’s vision strongly affirms our post-Second Vatican Council achievements and encourages further development. The early influence of a deep reinterpretation of tradition through the lens of historical consciousness has laid the groundwork for modern, comparative approaches and their use in culturally sensitive, contextual theology.
Theology students preparing for lay and ordained ministry from five continents join the university’s 168-country-strong international student body, representing Toronto’s cultural diversity, and engage in multidirectional learning within a diverse scholarly community. Outreach to underserved and often remote Indigenous communities through “listening circles” is identifying new needs for ministerial formation and offering fresh perspectives on ways of knowing and learning. Students are preparing to accompany others who share their own unique cultural background, and develop the intellectual flexibility and emotional freedom needed to enter new worlds of meaning inhabited by others unlike themselves.
Today, theology’s task is not to erase differences but to foster a collaboration of gifts as humanity continues to reach toward divine purpose beyond the grasp of any culture or language. ■
For more information on Regis College visit www.regiscollege.ca
The best theology engages life and experience, and we can only do that by truly listening to the experience of humanity.”
Scott Lewis S.J. (Convocation Address, Regis College, 7 Dec 2018).
Books of Interest
Alexander Ezechukwu O.C.D.
The subject of transformation resonates with many people because human beings are ever on a quest for a more meaningful existence. In seeking to connect with the deeper dimensions of existence—such as love, compassion, unity, and consciousness of a more fulfilled and authentic way of living—a secure pathway for guidance becomes important. The book The Triple Way to Transformation by Susan Muto has, as its subject, this very pathway to transformation.
For Muto, the work of spiritual formation “facilitates our openness to the transcendent dimension of life while enhancing our unique-communal participation in every aspect of personal and shared responsibility.” The aim, however, “is to unfold slowly, methodically and consistently a basic, universal, and classical approach to the process of Spirit-guided formation, re-formation and graced transformation in accordance with our unique-communal life call in Trinitarian love.”1
One of the most significant issues that Muto addresses in the book is what she understands as the sad fact that people give up on the journey of transformation. This, for her, seems to be due to a
misconception of the classic description of the spiritual journey—the threefold path of purgation, illumination, and union. This misconception could arise from a more informational approach to the spiritual life that might give the impression that the journey through a threefold path could be conceived in linear terms. And so people can get discouraged when they do not see themselves arriving from one stage to the next at a particular time they expected to be there. This then can give rise to despair and depression, leading a person to think that the journey is not for them but for an elitist few. They may also buy into the idea that given their struggles and mistakes, they are either not good enough for what it takes to make the journey or that God is not interested in them. Muto contrasts this depreciative attitude with the disposition towards purifying formation, meaning that our weaknesses and failings in fact provide us with spiritual opportunities. In this light, every single day becomes an amazing story of being formed, reformed, and transformed by the Lord. So, for Muto, the concern is to find a way, a path, to move people from depreciation to appreciation; from an analysis of self that puts them in a negative stance towards life to an awareness that, in every experience, there is an opening to an upward uplift to the transcendent and the transforming graces of God.
In order to do this Muto explores the metaphor of the ‘way’ which is evident in the title of the book. Her approach to the topic of the spiritual journey would be helpful to a person showing an opening or interest in spirituality, as it is a gentle and an empowering approach.
Perhaps this way may speak to the situation in many western countries where Christianity is rapidly in decline despite the many centuries of building up a fortress of intellectual theology. Such intellectual theology has exposed the need for a complementary theology/spirituality of formation as advocated by Muto—the kind that takes the truths of faith and embodies them in everyday life. If not embraced then, when chips are down and life crises, whether personal or societal, arise one will be left totally vulnerable.
Muto’s approach has implications for how faith communities approach faith formation. The challenge would entail, for example, adopting a creative and imaginative approach in the area of catechesis for example. In other words, taking theological information in small doses and having an experiential reflective conversation that inspires someone to think about how that information is going to affect the person’s life in its entirety— body, mind and spirit. This approach is knowing how to apply the information about the faith to one’s lived experience. The ‘how to’ is the key question behind Muto’s formative spirituality approach. In other words, as regards the Catholic or Christian tradition one would be asking questions like: how do we live what we profess to believe? How is it that we don‘t? Why is it that after many years of informational theology we choose formation traditions foreign to Catholic doctrine and start living by them? How is it that cradle Christians are so vulnerable to a secularistic, humanistic, atheistic, existentialist world?
In The Triple Way to Transformation the ongoing journey throughout life of purified formation, illuminating reformation, and unifying transformation is an identifiable thread that weaves its
way through the book and is supported by the writings and experiences of several spiritual writers in the 2000-year Christian tradition. It is a work that manifests Susan Muto’s many years of reflection on the spiritual journey. It also shows her conviction that information alone about this path is insufficient. It needs to be complemented by understanding how such information informs, reforms and transforms lived experience. This is the purpose of applied spirituality, to find a way to bridge the gap so that what one believes and how one lives become more and more harmonious and integrated. This too, is the aim of The Triple Way to Transformation
The Triple Way to Transformation
By Susan Muto
254 pages
Published by Teresian Press, Oxford (2021) Available as an E-Book: £13.12
Paperback:
£16.40 / $25.00 (US)
Carmelite Book Service (UK) Epiphany Association Bookstore (US)
With One Accord
O God, our Creator, You, who made us in Your image, give us the grace of inclusion in the heart of Your Church.
R: With one accord, we pray.
Jesus, our Saviour, You, who received the love of women and men, heal what divides us, and bless what unites us.
R: With one accord, we pray.
Holy Spirit, our Comforter, You, who guides this work, provide for us as we hold in hope Your will for the good of all.
R: With one accord, we pray.
Mary, mother of God, pray for us. St. Joseph, stay close to us. Divine Wisdom, enlighten us.
R: With one accord, we pray. Amen.
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With One Accord signature music for the Magdala interview composed by Dr. John Paul Farahat and performed by Emily VanBerkum and John Paul Farahat.
NOTES
Alexander Ezechukwu O.C.D.—Books of Interest 1 Susan Muto. See https://epiphanyassociation.org/susan-muto/ Accessed on 12 May 2024.
Images used in this edition:
Cover: “Contemplative Woman” by Beatrice Offor (1864-1920).
Page 4 “Thomas Aquinas” Anon 15th century.
Page 5 “Dame Julian of Norwich” statue by David Holgate.
Page 10 “Sant’Anna Morente” by Giovanni Battista Maini (1690-1752).
Page 11 “Mary Magdalene at Her Writing Desk” by The Master of the Female Half-Lengths (16th century).
Page 14 “Tropical 1917” by Anita Malfatti (1889-1964).
Page 20 “Summer” by Gustave Doré (1832-1883).
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